“This Case is too well known to require more
than a partial summary of particulars"...
“Ahem! we will skip the particulars, however
partial,” said Mr. Thompson. “Ah!—what
do you mean here, sir,—but enough!
I think we may be excused your Legal Considerations
on such a Case. This is how you employ your law-studies,
sir! You put them to this purpose? Mr. Beazley!
you will henceforward sit alone. I must have
this young man under my own eye. Sir Austin!
permit me to apologize to you for subjecting you to
a scene so disagreeable. It was a father’s
duty not to spare him.”
Mr. Thompson wiped his forehead, as Brutes might have
done after passing judgment on the scion of his house.
“These papers,” he went on, fluttering
Ripton’s precious lucubrations in a waving judicial
hand, “I shall retain. The day will come
when he will regard them with shame. And it shall
be his penance, his punishment, to do so! Stop!”
he cried, as Ripton was noiselessly shutting his desk,
“have you more of them, sir; of a similar description?
Rout them out! Let us know you at your worst.
What have you there—in that corner?”
Ripton was understood to say he devoted that corner
to old briefs on important cases.
Mr. Thompson thrust his trembling fingers among the
old briefs, and turned over the volume Sir Austin
had observed, but without much remarking it, for his
suspicions had not risen to print.
“A Manual of Heraldry?” the baronet politely,
and it may be ironically, inquired, before it could
well escape.
“I like it very much,” said Ripton, clutching
the book in dreadful torment.
“Allow me to see that you have our arms and
crest correct.” The baronet proffered a
hand for the book.
“A Griffin between two Wheatsheaves,”
cried Ripton, still clutching it nervously.
Mr. Thompson, without any notion of what he was doing,
drew the book from Ripton’s hold; whereupon
the two seniors laid their grey heads together over
the title-page. It set forth in attractive characters
beside a coloured frontispiece, which embodied the
promise displayed there, the entrancing adventures
of Miss Random, a strange young lady.
Had there been a Black Hole within the area of those
law regions to consign Ripton to there and then, or
an Iron Rod handy to mortify his sinful flesh, Mr.
Thompson would have used them. As it was, he contented
himself by looking Black Holes and Iron Rods at the
detected youth, who sat on his perch insensible to
what might happen next, collapsed.
Mr. Thompson cast the wicked creature down with a
“Pah!” He, however, took her up again,
and strode away with her. Sir Austin gave Ripton
a forefinger, and kindly touched his head, saying,
“Good-bye, boy! At some future date Richard
will be happy to see you at Raynham.”
Undoubtedly this was a great triumph to the System!
